Chapter 2: Clown World

  ***

  Alex was startled awake with a pained grunt. His head pounded something fierce, and he was certain the afterimage that currently danced along in his vision was going to be there for the rest of his life. Right now he had a fungus shaped overlay on his entire field of view.

  When he finally managed to blink through some of the stars, he found himself looking up at the branches that loomed over him. The trees, and their leaves obscured the entirety of the sky, creating an emerald ceiling above Alex. The soft light that filtered down in the forest below left everything in a musky emerald haze. Like the inside of a van belonging to a highschool drop-out.

  Alex was on his back, grass cool against his neck. Real grass, not the fake plastic shit from the soccer field. I must’ve been blown clear…

  He sat up slowly and then flexed his limbs. Feeling no pain, he then rolled his joints, and took a few deep breaths. Aside from a pounding headache, as far as he could tell, nothing felt broken. No sharp aches, and no searing burns. It was like he was simply picked up by a pair of soft and caring hands, moved off the soccer field and gently lowered to the grass. And then punched repeatedly and viciously in the god damn head.

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  He sat up, blinking through the haze. Where’s the team?

  A quick glance behind him showed the captain, Devon, and Allie sprawled a few paces away. Alex crawled to Thompson first. He had no visible injuries, just unconscious. Devon and Allie looked the same, out cold, but breathing steady.

  What the hell…?

  He knew that blast. Everyone on the mission had been briefed to hell and back about the possibility. Command practically wanted them paranoid. It was why they wore Radiant Gear. Why Alex hadn’t trusted the captain’s earlier reassurance.

  Nuclear Bomb.

  These weren't the weapons of the early twentieth century either. Humans had really honed their skills at death and destruction by the time Alex was even born. Now, a nuclear bomb was no bigger than a standard suitcase and still just as strong as the moving-van-sized ones of a half-century earlier.

  Alex had seen it: the unmistakable glow, the mushroom shape of the blast. Somewhere between suitcase and moving van, easily enough to kill them all.

  And yet... they were still here. Alive.

  He slowly stood up, finding his legs wobbly beneath him as realization hit him. He shouldn't be here, none of them should be here. The suits protected them from the radiation, but that was it, not the shock wave and not the heat of the blast.

  Alex stumbled a few steps toward one of the trees. He used it to stay upright as he looked around more clearly. He could see two more shapes on the grass a few paces away. He assumed those to be Henry and Garret.

  He shifted his body, getting an angle to look past the trees beyond his prone teammates. The trees beyond were now more densely packed than he remembered. He was having trouble seeing much further than where Garret now lay. He was able to see enough though. More forms lay on the ground beyond the trees deeper in.

  The members of the Uni Squad had been blown clear too, it seemed.

  A rustling noise caused Alex to stiffen against the tree he had leaned on. His eyes darted to the right a few feet. A man wearing the Uni uniform stood there looking directly at Alex from behind the iron sights of a rifle.

  Alex's gut lurched, and his skin chilled down to his muscles. Alex had forgotten his rifle on the ground when he got up. He was too preoccupied with his teammates and his pounding headache, and he had left it there.

  He could see the very subtle shift of weight in the man's frame and the twitch of his hand, and he knew. Alex closed his eyes. He couldn't dodge bullets, so why would he even try? At least his head wouldn't hurt anymore. As they always said, there was a silver lining to everything.

  Alex heard the faint click as the man pulled the trigger. He felt and heard nothing. Nothing at all. Was it that quick? He didn't even feel a bit of a tingle.

  Then he heard the click of the trigger again...

  ...and again.

  Alex opened his eyes. He was still stood against the tree, unharmed. The man was ten yards in front of him, still pointing his rifle at Alex. The man's face was in a scowl now though, and he was looking at his rifle. The trigger clicked repeatedly as the man kept squeezing.

  It must have somehow broken in the blast. Alex thought to himself. His eyes darted to the prone form of Henry. The scout was just four or five feet away, he could dive over to him and pick up his weapon easily enough.

  Alex looked back to the other man. He had stopped pulling the trigger on his weapon and was looking at Alex now. His eyes flickered from Alex to Henry's form, then to the form of one of his own teammates not three feet away. A teammate who surely also had a rifle lying next to them as well.

  There was only a moment of awkward silence as the two of them looked at each other before Alex moved. He dove toward where Henry lay in a mad leap. He landing knocked the wind from his lungs, but he grunted and pushed through. He grasped the rifle’s stock and pulled it towards him frantically. He moved the weapon about six inches before it stopped, and Henry’s form shifted next to him.

  The damn sling. Alex forgot Henry always had his weapon on its sling. Damn. Damn. Damn. Come on. He pushed himself closer, slamming on the release clasp on the rifle stock. It let go with a shing! The sound was like church bells to Alex’s ears.

  Yes! He turned over into a seated position. By the time he got the rifle pulled around his body and looked up, Alex saw the other man was faster than him. Their rifle was already pointed towards. The man's rifle clicked. Nothing.

  What, Alex looked down at the weapon in his hands, No god damn way.

  Alex pulled the trigger on the weapon, not even bothering to aim it away from the ground. It clicked as well. No round was fired. That was three rifles and they all couldn't have just accidentally been damaged, that was impossible.

  Alex laughed.

  He let out a deep belly laugh as he raised his head. The weapon clattering to the ground in front of him. He laughed at the bad luck. He laughed at his headache. He laughed at the image of the glaring mushroom still dancing in his retinas. Alex laughed at the entire clown world he now found himself in. He just couldn't help it. After a couple of seconds of his hysteria, the other man started to laugh with him. They laughed together like that for a few minutes until the chuckles eventually died down. Alex wiped his eyes with dirty fingers and sighed.

  "I'm Alex. Alex Pierce." He called out so the man could hear.

  There was a second of silence until the man nodded to him. "Lance Spaulding."

  Alex nodded back to him but didn't say anything else. He didn't need to, they both realized how crazy of a situation they were in.

  "Pierce, what the hell is going on?" Alex whipped his head around, finding the Captain looking at him angrily. When had he gotten up?

  He looked at the captain, then back at Lance. He sighed, letting himself fall back on the ground completely.

  "Clown world cap, clown world." He said, as if that was the explanation for everything.

  ***

  It was only a few minutes after Alex's laughing fit that everyone else started to wake up. It was incredibly tense at first, with a few people almost doing the same deadly dance that Lance and Alex had done. It was a useless dance given the state of their tech.

  They managed to explain to everyone how the rifles weren't working, though not why exactly. Henry had taken his rifle apart completely and put it back together but he couldn't find anything physically wrong with the thing. The weapon was as clean as Henry’s sense of humor was dry. And still, it didn’t work.

  A little more experimenting showed that their tablets and all the rest of their gear were also not operational. All fried. Their suits were no more than heavy decorations that gave a slight protection from punches and bug bites. The only good news was that they all seemed completely healthy.

  Removing the threat of sudden death didn't magically have the squads stop being enemies though. The two teams kept their distance from each other, barely speaking at all while they waited for everyone to catch their bearings.

  Alex simply sat and listened to the squabbles and the whispers. Plenty of paranoid ideas were brought to his ears. Each team thought the other was responsible for the blast of course. Even though they were both caught up in the shit show. Thompson and the other Squad's team leader, who Alex learned was named Kate Locke, each sent out scouts to see what happened with the bomb and the surrounding area. Alex was already of the idea they wouldn't come back with any real intel. This rabbit hole probably led deep.

  He slowly started to learn names.

  Of course, the guy who almost killed Alex, and who Alex also almost killed in return, was named Lance. A large, broad man, he kind of reminded Alex of his father. Tall, confident, not letting the unknown make him hesitate. He was the scout that got sent out by Kate.

  The other scout on the Uni squad whom Alex remembered from before the blast, the woman, was named Holly Xiao. She was shorter than Alex by a few inches, slender frame, dark hair, and petite features. She stayed by Kate, her eyes moved about constantly. It seemed she was having a hard time of it as well. The woman kept breathing deeply as she looked around, and Alex guessed it was some kind of self-help guru thing.

  He didn’t ask. Everyone was coping in their own way. His had just involved manic laughter, so he wasn’t one to judge.

  The other three men in Kate's squad maintained a bit of a triangle formation, watching the trees and beyond. Alex wondered what the point of that was, given that their rifles didn't even work.

  Zach Weller, a tall pale guy, probably six-foot four-inches in height, caught Alex's attention next. He seemed the calmest out of his whole team, he simply glanced at everyone periodically and scanned the foliage around them. Zach was their Henry; lurking, dark still water with a bodycount hiding beneath the surface.

  Cole Blackwell was a black man about the same height as Alex. He didn't get any particular violent or confident vibes from the man like he did from Zach. Actually, once he paid closer attention to the gear he was carrying, Alex realized the man was their squad medic. He was probably not a primary combatant kind of guy.

  Lastly, there was Peter Hill. Alex liked him immediately. Despite everything that happened, the blast, the broken gear, the looming existential dread, Peter still had a gentle smile and this... ease to him. People who spoke to him actually seemed to calm down, which was both admirable and deeply suspicious.

  Everybody kept to their squads as they all waited. Garret, Allie, and Devon were next to the captain, talking in hushed tones. It was obvious Devon was rattled, he kept asking questions, the answer to which Thompson couldn't give, as no one knew what the hell was happening. They were in the dark, and the dark wasn’t talking.

  Allie was keeping it together for now. She looked to just be waiting, watching. Sort of what Alex was doing, if he was being honest.

  Alex’s mind nagged at him though. Something was giving him a feeling like a reverse sense of Deja Vu. He was forgetting something important, or at least he felt like he was. His head still hurt like hell though, so he chalked it up to that, and ignored it for now.

  Garret appeared to resign himself to making a joke about everything. At least he didn't break down into mad laughter like Alex did earlier. After almost five minutes though, the guy’s halfhearted attempts at one-liners began to get stale.

  Alex was about to lie back down again when Henry and Lance returned. The look on their faces told Alex that things were wrong, more wrong than he even first thought.

  "What do you mean the city is gone? The blast wasn't big enough for that." Kate's voice hissed as she questioned Lance. The guy simply shook his head and glanced over at Henry.

  Henry nodded at Lance and looked at Captain Thompson. "It’s as he said."

  Once the two of them had gotten back, everyone approached the scouts, enemy sides forgotten in the anticipation. No one wanted to miss the bad news.

  What followed was Lance giving a rundown of everything they found in the last ten minutes. Or it was more like what they didn't find. Which was fuck all.

  The two had walked for five minutes, then jogged, then sprinted, never finding the end of the trees. They never even got a glimpse through the thick canopy. Just more and more forest was all they could find. They couldn't explain it.

  "Either the city is gone, and the bomb somehow transplanted an entire forest in its stead." Lance said as he looked at Henry, and then at Kate. "Or, we are completely lost."

  "Impossible." Kate stepped forward. "You went how far?"

  "At least a half mile." Lance didn't look away from her glare.

  "What?"

  "How can this be?"

  "Where are we then?"

  "This must be a sick joke ri-"

  Everyone began talking over each other. The idea they were completely outside the mid-zone with no idea of their location was the final crack that broke the teapot. The fears and anxieties started pouring out.

  Alex stepped away, letting the chaos swirl without him. Thompson and Kate could handle the shouting match. Or not. Either way, they’d need a few minutes to fail with authority.

  He used the time to think. They were in an unknown forest. Everyone had been unconscious. Transported? Relocated?

  But why?

  If either country had found them, one squad would be prisoners and the other dragged back for debriefing. Instead, both groups got dumped in the middle of Nowhere National Park, with weapons that clicked like bad stage props. That didn't track.

  If some neutral party had found them, they would have at least taken them to some sort of civilization to contact their countries and figure out exchange or transport. Again, they wouldn't have just woken up with grass in their mouth after taking a moss nap. Alex just didn't get it.

  This isn't the doing of someone or some group. It feels too random, without proper reason or thought.

  Alex frowned. He remembered the blast, the light and that strange pressure wave against his suit’s shield. Then nothing. Just grass in his mouth and a headache the size of… well a nuclear bomb.

  There was something he should be remembering. A massive clue, just out of mental reach. Like trying to recall a dream while it still mocks you from the corners of your brain.

  He grit his teeth. Come on, brain. Was it a sound? A sensation? A universal memo slipped under the door? The universe didn’t answer, nothing but a cosmic pickle of enormous proportions.

  "Enough," Thompson's voice rang out, pulling Alex from his thoughts. "We won't figure things out just standing here arguing. Right now we need to figure out our next move. So then," Thompson stepped away, looking at the forest around them. "We need to figure out survival until we can contact someone. Shelter. Water. Food. In that order. Let's designate duties."

  "You are not in charge here. Not with my squad." Kate stepped up, putting her face close to Thompson's.

  He didn’t blink. "And you’re more interested in chest-thumping than not dying. Let’s work together, or we can fight over who starves first." He offered his hand.

  Kate stared at it like it was likely going to poisoned. "Of course you'd try to take over. Typical New’ser. You want a man in charge? Not happening."

  She turned and marched back to her squad like she’d just won something.

  Damn it. Alex shook his head.

  He was hoping that old biases and propaganda wouldn't hold up now that they are all in the same boat. It looked like he was wrong. Alex understood the difficulty in trusting people, he truly did, so he didn’t fault Kate in the least. To his own credit, the captain didn't push it. He simply shrugged his shoulders and walked back toward Allie, Garret and Devon. Alex went with him, followed closely by Henry.

  It looked like the survival teams were set then. Everyone sticking to their own and all that.

  "Alright Team," Thompson sat on the grass once they moved a few hundred yards away, thus putting distance between themselves and the other squad.

  The rest of the team sat down around him. "Time to figure out a plan and assign duties. Who thinks they're good at what?"